Saturday, February 26, 2011

Pirates, Trucking, and Netflix, oh my!


What does it mean when your three year old jumps up on the bed, scootches down and gets all comfy, then grabs your romance novel sitting next to her and opens it up to read? I'm just curious . . . Also, what does it mean when she develops and attitude roughly the size of Asia? Don't get me wrong, I have quite enough attitude to match her any day, but I worry for the poor preschool teacher that is going to have to deal with it soon. The poor person. And have I mentioned she's stubborn? Yeah, she got that from me too. I seemed to have passed on a lot of traits that may have been better off staying in the gene pool. At least she got my eyes. And her daddy's butt. That is certainly a wonderful asset to have.

In other news, my new obsession of the week has moved on from very hot fictional characters and on to Captain Jack Sparrow! I watched the Pirates trilogy last week, and just enjoyed it thoroughly, wallowing in the wonderfulness. I love the second and third ones, but the first one is just . . . magic. Utter perfection. I've been quoting it in my head ever since, although not to many other people. Just because I'm crazy enough without sharing all the details with the world. I'm conscientious that way.

So, I believe I've shared the information already about my husband doing trucking and all that, and I have sort of an update. He's been gone since January 8th, and in that time I have seen him once for about 20 minutes when he was passing through. But there maybe an end in sight. He's only got about twenty or so hours left for his training, which means that hopefully in a few days he's all done. The catch to this is that before he can come home, he has to do at least one run solo. And he has to get his truck first, which we're hoping will be really quick. But there's no telling if he'll have to wait for it or not. So, *crossing fingers* we're thinking another two weeks just to be safe. And that puts us around March 11th, which will be 9 weeks that he'll have been gone . . . as opposed to the 4-6 that we were told it would be. This irritates me to no end, let me tell ya. But there's nothing we can do about it, so I'm just hoping the days go by fast and that things don't feel weird when he finally comes home. We're going to run away for a couple days and just hide out in a hotel somewhere, so that will be wonderful.

Ooh, ooh, I have a funny book recommendation for you, and a movie recommendation. The book is a kid's picture book called Tadpole's Promise by Jeanne Willis. It's a really cute book, but has a surprise ending that is on one hand distressing and disturbing, and on the other FREAKING HYSTERICAL!!! I kinda fell over laughing, and I showed it to my mother in law and sister in law. They leaned a little more to the disturbed side, but still laughed. As for the movie recommendation, I saw Must Love Dogs recently, with Diane Lane (this is actually the first movie I've ever seen her in), and John Cusack who is an actor I really love. The movie was so cute, and just funny and I loved it! I have my friend Lindsie to thank for that, she pestered me for a week until I finally got if from Netflix (love them too, by the way)and fell in love. Oh, while we're on the subject of movies, another one I saw recently and LOVED was When Harry Met Sally. Oh my gosh, I ADORED Billy Crystal!!! It's really awkward/painful to watch a main character as sweet and wonderful as that and have your significant other away from home and not there for snuggling. But anyway, loved those!!!

Oh, and while I'm here, I wanna send a shout out to the person that decided to put clean up stations at intervals in the Petsmart stores. BRILLIANT idea. And not for the reason you would think. Oh no, this doesn't even have anything to do with pets. It has to do with coughing children that just ate dinner and spent 15 minutes running around the pet store like there was no tomorrow. And promptly coughed hard, gagged, and barfed all over the floor by the Purina One. Heaven bless the wise, wonderful person that decided a cleaning station should go the next aisle over, not ten steps away. Bless you, brilliant person.

And right now said daughter is undressing herself to slather on some lotion, so before I end up running through the house trying to force a greased 3 year old into a pair of pants, I'm gonna go tackle her now. Hope everyone has a lovely, tantrum free day and doesn't get muddy paw prints all over their clean sheets like I just did. Bye!

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Potty Training Drama


I have a funny story for you. So today, just a few minutes ago in fact, my three year old was sent to go potty. She can do it by herself, but you have to tell her to go or she won't. So after some persuading and a little bit of raised voices and turning the TV off, she went to go potty. It all went well, she was all done, then suddenly she started crying. With real tears and everything.

So I go in to see what's the matter, and she's got her face in her hands and everything, and I'm thinking she got hurt. So I ask her, "Did you get an owie?" She says no. I ask her, "Did something scare you?" She says no. So I ask her one more time if she got hurt, because sometimes she's too busy being upset to remember she did get an owie, but she said no again, in a very annoyed fashion, like Geez, mom, I already answered that.

I'm completely puzzled as I kneel on the floor hugging her and rubbing her back, and ask if she's ready to go watch her movie again, and she perks up and stops crying. But then she looks at the toilet and almost starts to cry again, and I finally get what she's upset about when she keeps pointing to the toilet paper and her butt. The child forgot to wipe.

So I ask her if she forgot to wipe her bum, and she sniffles and says, "Yeah." Ok, I'm totally ready to fall over laughing at this point, but I help her get her pants and panties down again so she can wipe and flush the toilet, and she goes running off to watch her movie in complete three year old bliss. I started laughing really hard, we're talking I almost did fall over into the wall, and had to share. I mean, really. That's too awesome that the worst thing in her life is that she forgot to wipe after she went potty. She was seriously very upset.

As you can tell, at this point, we're doing potty-training right now. Well, we have for almost two months now, but we've hit a snag on getting her to go on her own. That, and she's afraid of the big potty. No joke. She will not even approach the thing without her panties securely in place, and there is no way she'll use public restrooms because they have big potties. I think she's afraid she'll fall in or something. It's a challenge because who really takes the cute little red training potty with them wherever they go? I certainly don't. How do you explain that? "Hi, I'm the weird mom with a willful child and I have to take her own personal potty everywhere we go."

So, if any of y'all out there have suggestions for this mommy's potty-training conundrum, be sure to let me know! I have no idea how to conquer the big potty phobia. And how to you explain to a three year old what it feels like when they need to pee? "Well, sweetie, it's when you feel an odd sensation down in your nether regions . . . " Yeah. That's what I thought. Anyway, I'll chat atcha later, hope you all have a good day. Or night. Or week. Or whatever. Ta!